Cameron Vaské

On point. I’d add—it didn’t even need to be malicious to happen this way. It’s bad design. It’s crisis management layered on crisis management layered on crisis management that got us into this problem. Burning it all down may seem tempting, but it’s designing something better that will fix it. Bitcoin does the something better at the level of money. Next we need better institutional design so that our intentions for the world we want to create align with the incentives of the world we choose to build and the principles behind how we choose to live. So yes, go buy the good sound money. Then let’s build some honest institutions and share responsibility for them and the world we create together. 📝 f2edf37a…

Come be curious with me. More on its way, tomorrow. https://open.substack.com/pub/thecommonwealthperspective/…

We are in an era of democratic rebirth—if we can keep it. https://open.substack.com/pub/hyperdimensional/p/clawed

Come prove me wrong, please. https://open.substack.com/pub/thecommonwealthperspective/… 📝 d6c00c20…

Last week, before the weekend, I slept maybe 35 hours. I wrote fifty-eight pages about the crises facing America—in our democracy, our economy, and our society & civics. I didn’t publish them. Not yet. Here’s why. https://open.substack.com/pub/thecommonwealthperspective/…

I’m gonna start calling this ‘marble-pilling.’ Honest institutions matter just as much as sound money. 📝 b5558b40…

Sound money is institutional honesty. It is also inherently part of America’s democratic republican tradition. - It requires the state to hold itself to account (literally) and keep its word in real time rather than defer its costs indefinitely into the future. - It aligns public spending with visible trade-offs instead of obfuscating the part of the true cost in inflation; it tells the story of what things actually cost. - It protects the value of work, savings, and contracts from quiet dilution; it’s how we keep our promises about tomorrow to ourselves and our fellow citizens. Sound money is part of institutional truth-telling and accountability. Put simply, when money tells the truth, governance must as well. Stay curious and stack sats, y’all.

Reshared here— So much to like in terms of questioning, line of argumentation, and ideas being posed here from John Avlon and the usual suspects at The Fifth Column. https://substack.com/@wethefifth/note/p-186911701 A few key things really stood out to me and got me excited: - There is a genuine opportunity here to distance from the illiberal extremes in favor of a common-sense politics that’s not “centrist” for centrism’s sake or “split the difference,” but by addressing the institutional and incentive structures that are repeatedly delivering poor results; - Voting systems are one part of this problem, because they force us to the extremes and push out representation for many Americans (just look at the latest Gallup poll from January showing only 27% of Americans identify as Republican, 27% as Democrats, and 45% as independents); - Overspending is the other half of this problem—constant fiscal deficits that blind the real trade-offs and incentives structures to governance driven by (in many cases well-intentioned, many not) instincts to solve everything through the state from both parties (implicitly through fiat currency debt financing); - A through-line I don’t think got as much play and I don’t recall explicitly stated: the crisis is about trust, legitimacy, legibility, and incentive misalignment. Definitely worth a listen. Got my attention immediately. This is more of the conversation I think we need to be having.

Controversial take: For those that want to explain to others the problems with fiat currency, don’t start with Bitcoin. I know it’s tempting to give “the solution” first, but it’s confusing and triggers an instant mental “immune response.” Start with fiat currency vs. sound money. Most people don’t realize what either of those terms mean in principle or in practice. In fact, I’d go as far as to say most people have never even heard the terms. Con: This is totally new to them, so they don’t know the background. Pro: This is totally new to them, so it doesn’t map onto preexisting biases. Explain how money used to be backed by gold, how we got off of that, and what that means. Explain how money is no longer backed by assets. Then explain how money can effectively be created “out of thin air.” Tie that to inflation and debt. Take your time. Be patient. This is all new to them. And now it’s starting to gel. You may even get the question: “Wait, so, money can just be created out of thin air, and that causes inflation? How does anyone save, then?” Now you can start to talk about Bitcoin. Explain it as sound money—because it is one. Explain its benefits. Explain it as a new, not-yet-fully adopted money system. Patience. Let them argue and question it. Give calm answers. This is how you reach people who dismiss this as a fad, a gimmick, or a Ponzi scheme. If fiat is all you know—which is most people—and you think money must be backed by a centralized institution with authority to be money, then yeah. Bitcoin sounds pretty fad-like, gimmicky, and Ponzi scheme–like. It doesn’t help that bad actors have used it, either (even though bad actors have used Dollars, Euros, and whatever else, too), or that there are genuine scam cryptocurrencies out there. It all looks the same to people who don’t know the difference. It’s almost a problem of being too aware of a complex thing—it’s so known to you, you don’t necessarily remember what it was like to not understand this and be learning about it. My guess is it took some time. It took curiosity. That’s what you need to engender in others for them to want to understand. Curiosity. And then they need time to develop understanding. If you don’t think this works—I’m here because of exactly that process. Curiosity. Time. Patience. Asking questions. Seeking answers. I didn’t get Bitcoin because of the blockchain technology, or out of a desire to speculate, or out of a distrust in other currencies per se. It all looked like *just* a digital fandom and technological nerdiness. I did it once I understood enough to know *why* it was a good investment. Because I now understood what sound money and fiat currency were, and why Bitcoin is a sound money. It made logical sense. I could see how it would help me. I could defend that decision. If Bitcoin is going to be *the* sound money in the future, it needs more adoption *as* a sound money. It only makes sense that it needs to be explained that way to people in terms they already understand from a perspective they already agree with. They need to be able to be curious about it, not defensive about it. And you can help with that. Stay curious and stack sats, y’all.

Trying to explain to family and friends that “dollars in bank account” ≠ “dollars you have.” And that’s very hard to do. Dollars in a bank’s possession is a promise for dollars. Not actual dollars you actually have. And even those are a promise on money backed by credit and faith, not actual money. 📝 4790d4e0…

Sound money is institutional honesty—what things actually cost.

Just wrote a full 38-page dissent memo on democracy, representation, and institutional realism for a pro-democracy / reform group, with counterproposals. Some early takeaways from the process and early discussion: - Citizens’ Assemblies are good for showing a snapshot of public sentiment, but can’t replace deliberative policymaking in a republic; - Especially in today’s America, any findings and/or policies from even a fully unbiased and good faith Citizens Assembly (and any supporting policy commission) will be polarizing, because enactment relies on existing legislative and executive, and therefore electoral incentive structures; - Because of this, elected officials—both “good” and “bad” ones—are incentivized to make decisions that appeal to the base that can get them elected, anyway. - As a result, the findings and any policy recommendations—whether good representations and solutions or not—instead become a new argumentative cudgel for politicians and parties to argue against each other. - Citizens’ Assemblies are, however, crucial tools for a public to rewrite the incentive structures behind elections and social choice by demonstrating preference in expressing that choice. The key is then to approach that assembly with a coalition of good faith actors, incentive- and institutional-level problems, and get feedback on a better system. In essence, good intentions that don’t address incentives and decision-making flows can do more harm than good. What do you think?